Episode 4 Journeys into the Ring of Fire

As a geologist, I believe that civilisations

around the world are driven by the rocks beneath our feet.

In this series, I'll be travelling around the Pacific Rim

to visit some of the most volatile places on Earth,

and discover how rocks are fundamental to human existence.

I'm visiting the perilous volcanic landscapes of Indonesia.

The geological booby traps of California.

And the hostile peaks of the Andes.

In this programme, I'll experience the breathtaking beauty of Japan

where a nation's culture has been inescapably defined by a geological curse.

Japan is one of the most dramatic and beautiful places on earth.

But here, the geological forces that created this awesome landscape

have also dealt the Japanese a harsh hand.

The problem is, this kind of rugged landscape covers three-quarters of the country.

And it has forced the population on to a few small coastal plains,

which have become some of the most overcrowded places on the planet.

I'm fascinated by the impact geology can have on people's lives

and I'm going to discover what the consequences are for the 127 million people living here.

'I'll be finding out how this mountainous topography has shaped spirituality,

'and everything from living space...'

I can nearly touch both sides!

Compact and bijou or what?

'..to etiquette...'

I don't think I can do that. Oh!

'..and entertainment.'

Hey, hey, hey, hey!

And by the end, I hope to have discovered the secret of how Japan has overcome its geological curse.

In Japan, three-quarters of the country's population

is crowded into massive urban areas, sprawling endlessly across its coastal plains.

Packed in cheek by jowl, these people are living in one of the most densely populated places on earth.

You don't have to look far to find signs of a country where space is scarce.

When it comes to building houses every square centimetre is at a premium.

Most houses and apartments here are over 20% smaller than in Western Europe.

At the core of the Tokyo central business district this much space,

a square metre, costs three-quarters of a million pounds.

Domestic housing suffers from high land values, too.

This is the Nakagin Tower in the heart of Tokyo.

Here the Japanese have made the most of the lack of space and created a monument to miniaturisation.

'I've come to see Seibee Yamashita, an international lawyer, who has lived here for 15 years.'

Look at this place! This is amazing!

-Ah! I can nearly touch both sides!

-Yeah.

-Compact and bijou or what?

My mum and dad used to have a caravan and it was just like this.

Where are your things?

Ah, yes.

This... This is my library.

-This is your library?

-Yes.

-All right, yeah, I can see that.

-This is my desk.

-Your desk?

-Mmm.

Look at that.

-And then I can work.

-That looks fine, actually, doesn't it?

-This is a refrigerator for something to drink.

-So where's your kitchen?

Oh, there's no kitchen in the room.

But what if you want to cook food?

I buy hot food in the convenience store downstairs.

-So you have a convenience store downstairs?

-Yeah.

-How convenient!

-Mmm.

So where's your bed?

Oh, this is bed.

-This is the bed?

-Yeah.

What, like...?

No. No, no, no.

I'm sorry.

It folds out.

-Like this.

-Well, that's not too bad, is it?

-Mmm.

This looks quite comfy, actually.

-Yes.

-But what's it actually like living in such a small place?

That's enough for me. Enough for me.

-Right. Why do people live in such small rooms in Tokyo, as this?

-Oh!

-Very expensive.

-Ah!

Land of Tokyo

is very expensive.

'I never expected to find an international lawyer living in five square metres.'

But it seems to accommodate Seibee and many others like him.

If the urban plains are so claustrophobic and expensive, why don't the Japanese spread

into the mountains, like people do in many other parts of the world?

This is a mystery I would like to solve, and I want to know if it's all down to the geology.

Japan is an archipelago, a chain of islands extending along the eastern coast of Asia in the Pacific.

The country is dominated by four main islands.

The far north is on the same latitude as Montreal,

and it stretches to Kyushu which is as far south as Miami.

According to legend, these Japanese islands were created by gods

who dipped a jewelled spear into a muddy sea and formed solid earth from its droplets.

As a geologist, my view is no less poetic or dramatic.

The earth is like a... cracked boiled egg.

Its surface is made up of a series of plates called tectonic plates.

There's a huge one that covers the Pacific,

and around its edges, around the Pacific Rim, are incredibly violent forces.

A zone of catastrophic earthquakes and volcanoes, known as "a ring of fire",

is created as the Pacific Plate literally floats around on the Earth's viscous interior,

moving against the surrounding plates.

With this tofu, I'm going to show you how Japan came to be in the danger zone,

situated at the scene of massive collision.

On the one side, two ocean plates, the Philippines and the Pacific, which are moving westward

at about 7 to 8 centimetres a year towards the Asian continental plate on the other side.

Because the ocean plates are dense or heavier, they push down underneath the continental one.

As they sunk deeper beneath it they pushed the continental plate up into a ridge.

That ridge forms the basis of the Japanese archipelago,

so it's no wonder this place is covered in towering peaks.

In fact, 73% of Japan is made up of mountains.

The classic Western view of this country being full of sheer rock faces,

with vegetation clinging on for dear life, isn't wide of the mark.

There are signs all over the place that it's a difficult place to live.

There's steep, winding roads, there's hanging villages and there's landslides.

Here in the mountains, farming isn't easy.

The soils are mostly bad, they're thin, stony, unstable, and heavy rains leech them of nutrients.

But how has geology made these mountains so particularly hostile?

I'm heading to central Honshu, to what are known as the Japanese Alps, in search of clues.

The Alps, both here and in Europe, are relatively young in geological terms,

and they're still being pushed up by all that buckling and warping.

There hasn't been enough time for them to be eroded, worn down,

smoothed off and levelled by the weather.

That's why they're still sharp and steep.

Just like the European Alps, these mountains have been made

even more rugged thanks to the work of nature's giant chisels.

Glaciers.

Glaciers are made up of fallen snow that over many years compresses into huge, thickened ice masses.

Over time the sheer weight of ice bears down on the rock below

cutting away at the landscape and scouring the mountains as it moves downhill.

There aren't any of these great rivers of ice left in Japan today,

but 18,000 years ago there were plenty and they left their calling cards.

A telltale sign that this landscape has been carved by glaciers

is the presence of these U-shaped valleys with their steep sides and their flat bottoms.

These were once V-shaped river valleys.

But glaciers follow lines of least resistance, stealing

the river valleys for themselves and scouring them into U-shapes.

All that glacial sculpting makes for beautiful scenery,

but this isn't the place for towns and villages.

Instead, for the Japanese it's a place for tourism.

They turn up en masse, in air-conditioned coaches, bringing their urban comforts with them.

These steaming craters are also part of Japan's geological curse.

Different forces of nature are at work here.

But the problem is they're even less sympathetic to urban settlement.

To show you what I mean,

I'm heading to Kyushu Island,

nearly 1,000 kilometres to the south.

This is Mount Aso, which lies almost in the centre of Kyushu.

It's pretty much continually active.

Often it's too dangerous to come here,

certainly not without special equipment.

The reason it's so dangerous is that down there, sulphur dioxide

and other toxic gases are bubbling off the molten magma, that's the molten rock far beneath the surface.

If that magma gets to the surface, it goes bang.

When it goes bang you hide in those shelters.

Mount Aso sits in the middle of one of the world's largest calderas.

That's a feature created when a volcano collapses in on itself.

This one is about 130 kilometres in circumference. You can see the edge of it just round there.

This place feels completely different from the Alpine landscape I visited before.

Those Alpine peaks were young, but here I feel like I've arrived right at the birth of a new planet.

It's as if I'm the only life form in a barren and forbidding wasteland.

That might sound a bit depressing, but to me this is geology heaven.

Just like the ridge I visited earlier,

Mount Aso owes its existence to those oceanic plates going down underneath the continental plate.

As they slide deeper down underneath it, fluids leave it,

pass upwards and reduce the melting temperature of the overlying rocks.

These melt to form magma, which forces its way up through cracks and fissures to the top.

And when they get to the surface, it forms a volcano.

This process of volcanic eruption and land building is still very much alive today.

In fact about 60 of Japan's 186 volcanoes are still active.

Japan is one of the most volatile places on earth.

And it's had more than its fair share of volcanic disaster.

Just over 150 kilometres from Mount Aso is Mount Sakurajima.

Here, all that magma pushing up, and bursting through the fissures in the rocks,

makes for a very perilous environment.

In 1779, over 140 people died during a huge eruption here.

Like the victims of Pompeii, most of those perished due to a

terrifying series of explosions, known as pyroclastic flows.

These happen at ground level and are violent blasts of hot gases and debris material,

like volcanic fragments such as pumice and glass shards.

They move at high speed, 50 to 100 miles an hour.

If you see one coming, it's too late.

And Mount Sakurajima has been seriously dangerous ever since.

At times during the last century,

there have been up to 200 eruptions a year,

earning it a place as one of the world's most active volcanoes.

Half a million people live in the shadow of the mountain in Kagoshima.

Originally a fishing port, the city is squeezed along the shoreline.

In the foothills of Sakurajima I meet Toru Minami who has lived here all his life.

He teaches local people about natural history and the legends of the mountain.

-So this is it, this is Sakurajima?

-That's right, that's right.

So what's it like when this thing actually blows off?

Oh, today it's very quiet. Like back four, five years ago, we had four, five times in a week.

You see that lightning on top and then huge... They're like mushroom-looking gas-smoke.

-You get a big mushroom cloud that goes way, way up?

-Way, way up.

Imagine like the atomic bomb explodes, huge in scale.

But right after that, the thing that you don't like, ash falls.

And then entire cities are covered with ash.

Some years, over 30 million tons of ash are discharged,

consisting of minute particles which can lodge deep in the lungs.

Unsurprisingly, the people of Kagoshima have to be ready for an eruption at any moment.

ALARM BELL RINGS

These pupils, running for their lives, are from the Oho Elementary School.

Protected by their hard hats they dash for cover.

Today it's only a drill, but they never know when it'll be for real.

-Is it really necessary, all that?

-It is necessary. They have to get used to it.

If they don't know how to manage themselves like that, in case of the volcano erupts,

they cannot control themselves.

It's a part of their lives.

The people around here do all they can to control the power of the volcano.

On Sakurajima, even rainfall can be deadly.

Following downpours, the water mixes with the ash and rock.

This creates huge rivers of debris, we geologists call them "lahars".

They sweep downhill travelling at over 50 miles an hour.

I'm standing in the path of one of those rocky rivers.

A network of massive canals has been built all over the volcano, costing two billion pounds.

They divert the flows of muddy debris away from the people and straight down the mountain.

The biggest flows are 600 cubic metres per second. That's equivalent to six double-decker buses rushing

by every second, and last year these canals were used 17 times.

You're obviously not supposed to be here.

I've been told to be very careful and keep my ears and eyes open

because you can't outrun one of those monsters.

The next day, heavy rain brought a huge lahar down this very channel.

I've got a feeling it isn't just the obvious physical dangers

that keep the Japanese away from the volcanoes.

There seems to be something more cultural, more spiritual going on in the mountains.

'At the Sakurajima shrine, worshippers believe the mountain is ruled by a god.

'Toru Minami takes me to a special service held in honour of this deity.'

-What's he doing now?

-Well, he's asking god of the volcano

to protect the people from the anger of the god

and at the same time to pray for the goodness and the good health of the people here.

-So do these people believe that there's a god in the volcano?

-Oh, yes, they believe in the god.

-But what about the scientific aspects, do they...?

-Oh, at the same time, yes,

they always look at the scientific point of view, too.

So they believe in the science and they believe in the gods at the same time?

Yes, the balance is what they are looking for.

So, are all mountains important, spiritual?

Of course. The mountain itself is the house of a god.

It is spiritually very, very important for the Japanese.

Without the mountains, they probably would think that we cannot live, so that we always have to ask

the god of a mountain to be quiet and to live together with us.

'Maybe for the Japanese these mountains are more of a sacred domain for the gods

'than a place for human habitation.'

A few kilometres away the Island of Fire Drummers have

taken a much more strident approach in dealing with the mountain.

Every summer they set up shop in the middle of a field of lava flows,

crashing their instruments as loudly as they can.

Wow! My ears are gone.

-So, Toru, what is this?

-Well, this is the typical Japanese, traditional Japanese beating, drum beating. Yeah.

Wow! And what was the music there?

Well, the tune for that number is "Seiki Zunou".

The literal translation for that is like "quiet mountain suddenly erupts".

So why are they actually doing this?

Well, it's very traditional, and then also that they - the humanity against nature.

-So, they're drumming against the volcano?

-Yes, drumming against the volcano.

-Is it very difficult, this?

It's very... Well, it looks easy, but when you actually try it, it's not that easy.

-You can try it and see how it works already, yeah.

-That big one.

-OK, you can try that.

It's quite hard. It's quite sore in your hand.

Wow, that's a big noise!

Thank you very much. Do you know "Scotland The Brave"?

-"Scotland The Brave"?

-TORU SPEAKS JAPANESE

IAIN HUMS "Scotland The Brave" TORU SPEAKS JAPANESE

Whether you believe in the god of the volcano or not,

Sakurajima is due for another eruption at any time.

I think it's amazing how these people have come to terms with life in the shadow of the volcano,

but for most Japanese this kind of existence is quite simply a risk too far.

As if the mountains aren't enough to force the people onto the plains,

there's the weather, too.

Rather like us Brits, as a matter of routine,

people always seem to greet each other by commenting on it

and the changing seasons attract plenty of media attention.

Look, front page news in yesterday's paper.

Rainy season ends across most of Honshu.

So this rain isn't rainy-season rain.

The mountains are a barrier, creating contrasting climates on the east and west slopes.

Winds blow air masses laden with moisture on to the western side of the peaks.

In the winter this leads to huge snowfalls, sometimes as deep as ten metres.

But on the eastern side of the mountains, the weather is much more suitable for human settlement.

The air masses lose their snow by the time they reach the east.

As luck would have it, that's exactly where the plains are.

Unfortunately, they're mostly small, created by debris swept down from the mountains.

To make things worse, those sheer mountains mean there are no gradual rising plains or hill country

on the edge of the flat lands, which can be adapted for human use.

The topography is dead flat and suddenly very steep.

As a result, apart from a few patches of farmland and countryside,

the plains are mostly crammed with people,

and because they're hemmed in by steep slopes,

once the plains have been settled, there's no more room for human settlement to expand.

And now we've got to the real heart of the problem.

The inhospitable volcanoes and mountains which cover most of Japan

have forced the population on to the plains.

I'm going to find out how this harsh geology has affected their lives.

Japan has a vast population of 127 million people.

The majority live in huge urban sprawls.

Cities, towns and villages tend to merge into an indistinct blur of houses and humanity.

The population density in Tokyo is a phenomenal 33,000 people per square mile.

Located in the country's biggest plain, the Kanto Plain,

Tokyo has spread beyond its political boundaries to form a massive urban complex.

The actual population of this metropolis is estimated at 30 million people,

considered together as the world's largest city.

The first wave of population was attracted to these plains here

because this was where you could grow rice,

Japan's most important crop and the perfect complement to my sushi.

There's something else that drew a second wave of people onto the plain.

Japan's post-war economic miracle.

At the end of the Second World War, Japan was left with a legacy of defeat.

Its economy had been devastated.

And once again geology had cursed it.

Metals and minerals were very scarce.

Japan needed to rebuild its manufacturing industry on the back of imported raw materials.

The place for the ports and harbours was the plains,

and there, too, was the land to build the manufacturing plants and house the workforce.

Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and fuelled by the low value of the Yen,

Japanese goods opened up export markets.

Almost overnight Japan managed to rebuild itself and become one of the world's most successful economies.

During the 1980s, it was vying with the United States for the number-one spot.

The country's become one of the biggest and most technologically advanced producers

of everything from ships, cars and machine tools to electronic equipment.

Today, the Kanto area alone produces nearly a third of Japan's entire gross domestic product.

That's more goods than Great Britain.

With rapid expansion and the chronic lack of space, the only option was to reclaim land from the sea.

It was a classic example of a country fighting back against geology.

Once, this was part of Tokyo Bay, an expanse of marsh and sea water.

Millions of tons of soil were bulldozed to create factory foundations.

Wetlands were converted one by one into sites for steelworks,

oil refineries and electric power stations.

Here you can find the ultimate industrial real estate.

Landfill is an expensive undertaking,

but there might yet be an even higher price to pay.

Japan lies on one of the most earthquake active regions of the world.

As the ocean plates collide against the continental one this thick,

the pressure builds up until suddenly it gives in and the ground starts to shake.

You can feel hundreds of earthquakes each year,

most of them are too small to notice without equipment.

But several are large enough to shake buildings,

to collapse shelves and throw things to the floor.

This earthquake simulator at one of Tokyo's disaster prevention centres

is used to teach people what to do when the big one strikes.

I'm with these disaster volunteers, and what we're being trained...

The key thing to do is to get some protection

on your head and get under a sturdy table.

Just kind of duck in cover.

The rigid walls of tall buildings can shatter under the pressure of an earthquake,

but in Japan, special features are added to absorb these forces and make the superstructure flexible.

Here at Tokyo's Nihon University, bendable braces have been designed for this new laboratory building.

Professor Masao Saito is the earthquake engineer responsible.

Can you tell me about the system you've got here to reduce earthquake shaking?

These bracing systems

are arranged along the whole wall of this building.

So you have this - a bracing system all the way along the wall.

Hundreds of these braces ensure the laboratory is twice as flexible as a conventional building.

I'll show you through this model.

As Professor Saito's model shows, when an earthquake hits,

each brace contains a piston which acts like a shock absorber.

So if the frame move and the piston...

work this direction.

-So it's dampening down everything?

-Dampens here.

-Beautiful.

-OK.

-This is the safest place to be in Tokyo?

-Sure.

-Standing here, holding on to this?

-Yes, yes, you, you are safest place in Tokyo.

And these buildings do need to be able to withstand huge seismic forces.

In 1995, fires and widespread destruction

were caused by the massive Kobe earthquake in western Japan.

It killed 6,400 people and left 300,000 homeless.

But the horror of what happened at Kobe is dwarfed by the great Kanto earthquake,

which in 1923 reduced Tokyo to rubble and killed 140,000 people.

Tokyo's overdue for another great earthquake

and these low-lying reclaimed areas are particularly vulnerable.

With some earthquakes, like this one in 1964, the shaking can loosen soil

and earth particles so they mix with water and become suspended.

The ground transforms into quicksand. This is called liquefaction.

It causes the foundations of buildings to give way so that they collapse.

Despite the perils of the plains,

that's where geology forced the Japanese to create their economic miracle.

But there's an upside to this geological lottery.

Because the country's transport network serves vast urban areas

on the coastal plains it's incredibly cost-effective.

Every kilometre of infrastructure such as motorways and railways

is able to reach far more people than the equivalent services in, say, Britain and America.

So it pays to spend heavily on transport.

The Japanese are building the fastest and most expensive railway in the world.

The Super Maglev.

I feel like a trainspotter.

But these beautiful, sleek triumphs of engineering are just amazing.

These trains don't run on wheels, they float on super-conductive magnets.

The technology may be German, but it's the Japanese

who are prepared to spend £90 million a kilometre to build the track.

A price worth paying because the train will connect vast urban centres.

As titanium super-conductors a few centimetres beneath my feet generate

an immensely powerful magnetic force the train is hurled forward.

At this speed it could make the journey from London to Glasgow in just over an hour.

I can't believe it, we're doing 500 kilometres an hour, that's about 300 miles an hour.

I feel a bit sick.

Soon the Japanese are to build a 560 kilometre long track between Tokyo and Osaka.

The funnelling of so many passengers along the same routes certainly makes for efficient transport.

But it does have a downside.

Overcrowding.

Here at Ikebukuro Metro Station nearly half a million people pass through during the daily rush hour.

Even though these trains run every minute not everybody can get on.

These guys in the caps are shovers, they regulate access to the train

and then they squeeze on as many passengers as possible.

So far, I've discovered how Japan's savage landscape

has hemmed the population into a small area.

But wherever they can, the Japanese have turned this geological adversity to their advantage.

Now I want to find out just how far the effects of living in these

overcrowded plains have reverberated throughout the country's culture.

Hello.

Wherever I go in Japan it occurs to me that all the people I meet are incredibly welcoming and polite.

In fact, the Japanese are famous throughout the world for their good manners.

Their rules of etiquette are very different from our own and can leave

Western visitors completely bamboozled.

I'm Iain Stewart.

I want to find out whether good manners

are a coping mechanism for an overcrowded society,

so I've come to the Ogasawara School

where Japanese etiquette has been taught for 33 generations.

-Hazime masite.

-Hello.

'Sayuri Maeda is my guide to some of these perplexing rules.'

Everyone is so polite in Japan.

Can you teach me some Japanese manners?

OK. We start the bowing, OK?

The first one is like this.

-OK.

-It's almost five degrees, and this is to say hello or something.

And the second one is like this.

And this is almost 30 degrees and this is for say thank you

-or say goodbye or something.

-OK.

And the third one is like this.

Oh, my!

-This is 45 degrees.

-45 degrees?

-Yes.

-Right.

-This is for apologise.

The fourth one is like this.

I don't think I can do that. Oh!

-Almost 90 degrees.

-90?

-Yes, and...

-You're joking?

-And this is for Emperor or a God.

-Thank goodness. Can I get up?

Yes, you can go up.

Oh, it really hurts the back of your legs. It's like a fitness exercise.

Yes, that's right.

-It's very good for you, I guess.

-Yes, I think so.

But etiquette doesn't stop at bowing, there are lots of rules for

conducting yourself in Japanese society.

I've noticed they give presents to each other all the time.

Why are presents so important in Japan?

-Almost every summer and wintertime we give the present to build a good relationship to the others.

-OK.

So maintaining good relationships between people you give presents?

Yes, that's right. Yes.

What a good idea. That's lovely.

Of course, choosing the right present is always important,

but in Japan the way you wrap it also has a special significance.

In this case the wrapping is carefully shaped like a bird,

the crane, which sends a powerful message.

The crane is a symbol of long life and happy.

The crane, the bird?

That's right, that's very symbol.

That's great, that's the head and the tail, yeah?

-Mm-hm, that's right.

-That's absolutely beautiful.

Look at that, that is exquisite, thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Even the most minute detail is important when building relationships in Japan.

I've got this theory that in Japan, good manners and politeness are to

do with overcrowding, the people being squeezed in. Do you think that's the case?

It's actually now it's so.

But it goes back about 700 years ago,

the Samurai Warriors, it's for the manners for the Samurai Warriors

but it's very useful in modern Japanese lifestyle.

Who would have thought that the swashbuckling Samurai could have created such refinement?

It seems this fine Japanese etiquette isn't just the response to post-war overcrowding.

It's been long embedded in much of the country's culture.

Japanese people were pre-equipped with a coping mechanism for the lack of space.

Good manners.

But I want to find signs of how they reacted to overcrowding after the fact.

I'm looking for something more recent.

It's time to see how the Japanese spend their spare time.

You might think this a bit extreme,

but to me everything you're about to see is actually down to geology.

Inside here is a rather strange looking game.

It's actually the largest industry in Japan.

Few people outside the country have ever heard of it, but it's the world's biggest gambling enterprise.

Vegas is small change compared to this.

This is Pachinko.

Pachinko employs a third of a million people, three times more than the steel industry.

It accounts for a staggering five per cent of Japan's gross national product.

What's Pachinko to do with geology and overcrowding?

Well, it's all to do with the mountains.

There simply isn't enough room for the landscape to be

dotted with football fields and sprawling golf courses.

Pachinko is the remedy.

It requires hardly any space.

In fact, the Japanese have adapted it to take up even less room than the original US design.

Modelled on an American horizontal pinball game, the machine was tilted vertically.

Now you can seriously pack them in.

To me, this really is a product of Japan's geological lottery, where land is at a premium.

Although this room is crowded, these people seem unaware of each other,

nor do they hear consciously the incessant deafening noise.

This is all about just one person facing one machine,

having a dialogue with little steel balls.

Excuse me, what are you doing?

Balls go here. Ball goes here.

So it comes down here and you've got to get it in there?

-Correct, true.

-All right.

I'll get it.

Did you see it?

You got it!

These machines are a wonderful form of miniaturisation.

Instead of a football pitch there are square centimetres of backboard, instead of players, tiny nails.

Instead of footballs, tiny steel balls.

I wonder if this reduction in size is always created by a lack of space

or is it that the Japanese find a beauty in small things?

I'm here to meet Emiko Miyashima, a poet and lover of Japanese literature.

Emiko what is this place?

Oh, this is a Haiku pub, very famous Haiku pub in Japan.

This was run by Massao Suzuki, a famous female poet, who happens to be his grandmother.

Oh, right.

A Haiku pub, that's great, so...

It's like a Haiku Mecca for for Haiku poets.

Right, so what exactly is Haiku?

Haiku is a short form of Japanese poetry.

Haiku read in Japanese takes only one breath.

Right. Wow!

Haiku poets regularly gather at the pub to appreciate each other's poetry. It's called a Kukai.

Today is a weekly meeting of Emiko's group.

-Beer with your Haiku. Slainte, Slainte, Slainte.

-Slainte.

What does that mean, like, long life?

Er, it's Gaelic, Scottish for down the hatch or, you know.

Everyone submits poems anonymously and then reads out their favourite.

WOMAN RECITES HAIKU

A child writing eight, number eight, with the house.

Oh, yes!

-Oh, that's beautiful, you can really see that.

-That's eternity.

SHE RECITES HAIKU

That's mine? Oh, that's mine.

Congratulations!

-You're a Haiku poet now.

-I didn't recognise it.

-May I read mine in English and Scottish first?

-Yes, yes.

OK, it's Mount Fuji, melting snow, rocks revealed.

Did you like it?

And the conviviality continued for hours.

Who would have thought that poems nearly 17 syllables long could so touch the imagination?

I simply love Haiku, its shortness, because it's more,

it is just my size, it is, maybe it's something in my genes to prefer those smaller, shorter things.

In the great cities of Japan there are hidden wonders which blend

the appreciation of the miniature with the need to save space.

On the 11th floor of a 20-storey skyscraper

in the middle of Tokyo is a small terrace.

And it's here that you step into another world.

This is a miniature garden.

The garden belongs to the famous architect Kishu Kurakowa

who also designed the Nakagin Tower

where Seibee the international lawyer lives.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Thank you.

What a beautiful garden you have.

Ah, it's very small but this is typical tradition of garden.

You say small but it's very big for for central Tokyo.

Yes, sometimes it's...

expressing natural landscape.

Each feature in the garden evokes something larger.

We have a waterfall there,

and then lake.

-This is a lake?

-Lake.

-Wow. Yeah.

And lake is spread to the...

-You know this is white sand, means water.

-Right, yes.

-This is water.

-This is water.

We have a huge wetland...

Flood plains, so sometimes sand.

And then the island.

It certainly looks like a real landscape to me, I can imagine if I was

in the Japanese Alps or somewhere, this would look just a...

Yeah, this is way for the Japanese people they enjoy the imagination of the Alps, you know, landscape.

So you live in the middle of Tokyo but you have your very own Japanese Alps?

Yes.

The garden leads to that most enigmatic of Japanese buildings, the Tea House.

My this is small.

Originally designed by the Samurai, a sanctuary from a violent world.

This space is a space of art, a space for imagination,

so that's why this calligraphy means the inside of the water.

It means the cosmos is here

in the small tea ceremony house.

In such a small space you have a cosmos.

So the room is the cosmos here.

Yeah.

Centuries ago the inventors of the Tea House didn't need to worry

about space, nevertheless they chose to make it small.

By doing so they created an inner space

in which the imagination could flourish.

The geology which puts a squeeze on much of Japanese life

doesn't fully explain their fascination with the miniature.

There's a joy found in small things which pervades this country.

The Japanese natural affinity with miniaturisation

played a crucial part in the post-war economic miracle.

When it came to the development of mass manufacture

of pocket-sized electronic goods, Japan was leagues ahead of the rest.

It didn't matter that the country had few resources.

They had the perfect mindset to make and market these goods.

But geology played a starring role in this success too.

It all began in 1955 when the forerunner of the Sony Corporation

put out the first pocket-sized transistor radio, the TR2K.

This was the first made-in-Japan item to overrun world markets since the folding fan.

The transistor was actually invented in the US, but it was the Japanese who made it a marketable item.

A few years after the first, Sony came out with a smaller model the TR620.

This was then the world's smallest radio.

It was a phenomenal success story.

The even tinier TR730 soon followed.

Sony went on to develop the Walkman and first tested it on the Japanese market.

The resulting success allowed Sony to become a world beater

and led the way for Japan to dominate the global consumer electronic market for decades.

But why did the Walkman do so well here?

It's all down to the rocks.

As we've seen, it's because of the rocks that we get overcrowding and it's because of the overcrowding

that people here crave personal space.

As people are crammed into trains and buses on their way to work

these stereos enable them to fulfil a fundamental human desire.

They can create their own personal cosmos.

In the old days you could make your own psychological space by

contemplating the riddles of Zen through meditation.

Nowadays you can create it with headphones.

In this way the spirit of Zen lives on in mobile phones,

which even show soap operas and documentaries.

Commuters that are crushed together on trains are touching physically, but

thanks to miniaturised technology they're separated immensely by barriers of sounds and vision.

Japan is a land of great challenges, a place whose rocky surface has been

violently shaped by the huge forces beneath their feet.

This geology has tempered the Japanese people and given them a steely resilience.

In rebuilding their defeated nation from the decimation of war, the inhabitants of this

magnificent archipelago had to dig deep into the reserves of ingenuity

and understanding of the world around them.

It's little wonder that their success story was called a miracle.

And the miracle means Japanese industrial might reaches across the world.

A potent influence in most developed economies.

Now the tectonic forces which pose an ever-present menace here affect us all.

Another major earthquake in Tokyo would be devastating for the country's economy.

If it happens, Japan won't be the only nation in the firing line.

So many countries have a stake in the financial markets here

that the effects of such a disaster would reverberate around the world.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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